Biden: 'War on women is real'

Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday he believes the right’s “war on women is real” and could be particularly salient during the multiple Supreme Court appointments he expects to come during the next president’s term.

“I think the war on women is real,” Biden said in an interview he sat for with MSNBC’s Ed Schultz as part of a campaign trip to New Hampshire to talk up the Buffett rule. “And, look, I tell you where it’s going to intensify: the next president of the United States is going to get to name one and possibly two or more members of the Supreme Court.”

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Looking ahead to the campaign, Biden says he sees the efforts underway as part of the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall as a “template” for the presidential election. Biden also criticized the Stand Your Ground laws like the one in Florida that seemed as if they might keep George Zimmerman from facing charges in the killing of Trayvon Martin. He said those laws lead to “ambiguity,” while steering clear of further comment.

While Democrats have accused Republicans of leading a so-called war on women, the GOP has countered by questioning the Obama administration’s record on issues affecting women and, since Wednesday night, by seizing on Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen’s comments on Ann Romney.

Biden joined the president, first lady and several Obama aides criticizing Rosen, saying she made “an outrageous assertion” in suggesting that Ann Romney hadn’t worked since she raised her children but didn’t have a career.

Mitt Romney, meanwhile, has in recent days been attacking President Barack Obama for leading an economy in which women have disproportionately lost their jobs.

“Women have been hit but men also have been hit,” Biden said. “The point is, look at the number of people who have been kicked out of the middle class, dropped out because they can’t stay there anymore. And this guy talking about women…this guy had a social policy on contraception that takes you back to the ‘50s.”

Biden said he wouldn’t say whether women would side with Obama come the fall. “I never predict what people are going to do,” he said, before making a prediction. “All I can say is the case we can make, Barack’s policies, our past, our expectations, our dreams for women contrasted with the Republican agenda as it has been and continues to be relative to women, I don’t think it’s a close call. And I think women will make that judgment.”

Biden said the Obama campaign is looking to Wisconsin as it plots a strategy to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars expected to flow from pro-Romney super PACs this fall, hoping for a grassroots effort to outweigh the influence of wealthy donors.

“It is the template,” Biden said, repeating a description that Schultz used in a question. “I just got finished talking to our volunteers in New Hampshire. And I said there is only one real antidote to what’s expected to be the hundreds of millions of dollars spent carpet-bombing the president …. It’s your next-door neighbor knocking on your door and saying, ‘I know these guys.’”

“I think and I believe we will have the best ground game in the history of American presidential politics. That’s the antidote,” Biden said.